Monthly Archives: April 2015

The agreeable Warm spring weather on Sunday found this young woman and her mount, along with several other equine and human friends, out for a Sunday ride along the East Mountain dirt road.

Within the last week, it seems that Spring days are finally beginning to outnumber Winter days. Not a flurry in the air to be seen, daffodils are pervasive, and no need for wearing fleece – finally the cotton hoody feels just fine.

On a beautiful Spring day, warm air lifts and fluffs this woman’s mane, it’s wind blown shape mimicked by her horse’s tail.

There had been a few days, not many, between the season’s first cross-country ski the last week of November, and the heavy rains the first week in April, that one could see anything but a blanket of snow on the ground.

A world frozen, locked solid, for months. Grass and vegetation happily dormant, insulated from the caprices of temperature and wind by the thick snow.

Sometimes the surface of the snowpack was hard, drift edges sharpened by stiff winds, sometimes left soft and sensuous by light dry snow falling through still air.

Until a couple of weeks ago, no green, nothing but unchanging silver, white, and grey.

Fern Hall Inn will be serving a delicious brunch buffet for $26 per person ($10 for children up to 12, free for children under 5). A quaint and historically significant bed & breakfast on the shore of Crystal Lake, in Clifford, Pennsylvania, Fern Hall Inn is the perfect spot to spoil mom.

Customers can choose anything from Fern Hall Inn’s Baked French toast with maple syrup and fresh raspberry syrup to their Antipasto platter of grilled zucchini, squash, asparagus and carrots with marinated artichoke hearts and red peppers. Outdoor seating is available on Fern Hall Inn’s patio with beautiful Elk Mountain as a backdrop.

These beings seem to have based their northward migration more on the calendar than prevailing weather conditions. Bewildered, rather than being able to rest and feed, they now pace thick ice in search of open water.

For the past two nights, thunder and lightning, riding wave after wave of fierce rain pouncing on the tin roof accompanied our dreams, at times, overwhelming us to wakefulness.

Morning revealed rivulets through the yard, formed only as Spring rains provoke frost from the ground, or during the most potent of Summer thunder storms.

A cold Spring can be every bit as uncomfortable as early Winter when one is not yet acclimated to the cold. As Winter progresses, cold is driven deeper and deeper into us, eventually making a 20 degree Winter day seem warmer than a 40 degree Autumn night.

Introspection has been our constant companion through the recent days on end of grey, mist or rain, with temperatures in the low 30’s. Unusual aches and cramps, deep within the core seem to become prominent and resolve at random, making us aware that indeed, the body is changing, responding to the change of season.

Even though late by the calendar, Winter continues to work it’s way out of the body, loosen it’s grip on water. Ice has already broken up and given way in moving water; soon the same will happen in ponds and lakes everywhere.

Cold Springs gives us a chance to rest in uncomfortable anticipation, knowing that, as it does every year, the strengthening radiance of the Spring Sun will evaporate the last of the ice, drive warmth to the marrow of our bones, replacing there the resolve necessitated by Winter.